Book Review-Gone Girl

Not one, but two unreliable narrators!  I love books with unreliable narrators.  As a reader, you can never be sure if what you are learning is true.  Sometimes events or other characters can give you a hint so you have something to grasp onto.  In Gillian Flynn's latest, Gone Girl, the reader is confronted with Nick as a narrator of the present, and Amy's diary as a narrator of the past.  What is the reader to think when those two sources of information don't match up?  Which one is telling the truth?  This is a book you can really sink your teeth into. When the story opens, it is Nick and Amy's fifth anniversary.  Nick is not a happy camper.  When he goes down to breakfast, though, Amy is cheerful and making a big breakfast.  The next thing we know, Nick is at the bar he owns with his sister, complaining to her about Amy, when he gets a panicked call from a neighbor.  He rushes home to find the door wide open, their cat on the step, the living room in a shambles, and a dress waiting to be ironed, with the iron on.  Amy is no where in sight.  As the search for Amy begins and intensifies, Nick becomes, well, let's say unusual, for a husband whose wife is missing.  The chapters alternate between Nick in the present and Amy's diary, starting with how they met.  As real time passes Amy's diary entries get closer to the present.  They paint a very different portrait of their marriage with the exception of the facts that both are very unhappy and both claim to be the one in the partnership who has tried, but failed, to please their unpleasable spouse. And then it gets really interesting! Read this book, but be sure to set aside plenty of time because you won't want to put it down.

Gone Girl By Flynn, Gillian 2012-06 - Crown Publishing Group (NY) 9780307588364 Check Our Catalog BookPage Notable Title Flynn's toxic mix of sharp-edged wit with deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds readers at every turn. When his wife disappears on their anniversary, Nick starts having cringe-worthy daydreams and becomes oddly evasive, eschewing his golden boy past. …More

Other books by the same author.

Sharp Objects By Flynn, Gillian 2006-09 - Shaye Areheart Books 9780307341549 Check Our Catalog A BookPage Notable Title After eight years, the murders of two preteen girls--timed nearly a year apart--bring reporter Camille Preaker reluctantly back to her hometown. As she works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, Camille finds herself forced to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past. …More

Dark Places By Flynn, Gillian 2009-05 - Shaye Areheart Books 9780307341563 Check Our Catalog "Flynn is the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre."--Stephen King. …More

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The Marriage Plot By Eugenides, Jeffrey 2011-10 - Farrar Straus Giroux 9780374203054 Check Our Catalog BookPage Notable Title It's the early 1980s--the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. But real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. 416 pp. 400,000 print. (General Fiction) …More

Before I Go to Sleep By Watson, S. J. 2011-06 - Harper 9780062060556 Check Our Catalog In this gripping psychological thriller in the vein of "Shutter Island" and the film "Memento," an amnesiac attempts to reconstruct her past by keeping a journal and discovers the dangerous inconsistencies in the stories of her husband and her secret doctor. …More

First You Try Everything By McCafferty, Jane 2012-01 - Harper 9780066210629 Check Our Catalog From the award-winning author of "One Heart" and "Thank You for the Music" comes the story of a marriage that's falling apart and a wife who will stop at nothing to keep it together, compassionately rendered in luminous prose. …More

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